A Wither'd Bloom
by Ramos
Summary: This is technically a Marriage Law fic, but isn't fluffy, or funny, or anything like my usual work. No violence, but plenty of pathos. It is more appropriately the death of a marriage don't read with an expectation of a happy ending. Oneshot.


Disclaimer: Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Severus Snape are the invention of J.K. Rowling, and thus the property of said author and her publishing goons, along with whoever else is pimping their products under her permissions. I make no profits from this, and intend no infringement.

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In the end, Hermione Snape could not even remember what, exactly, the man had said that put her over the edge. It was just another of his hateful, judgmental, snarkier-than-thou comments, no different than the hundreds, nay thousands, she'd already endured during their few years of marriage. One could not even say it was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was more the gossamer weight of a spider's web – negligible, almost intangible – but in the end, it was enough.

"Where are you going?" he demanded testily as she pushed back the covers and rose from their bed.

Hermione made no answer as she reached for her robes lying on the floor. A part of her mind felt completely detached, insulated and calm, as she pulled the fabric over her shoulders and settled it around her body. Scooping up her underthings in one hand, she glanced about the room for anything she wanted to take with her. It was, perhaps, a sad commentary on the state of her marriage that after four years there was nothing in the room that belonged to her; not a single personal effect to show that this room had been inhabited by a couple rather than one man.

Severus called out her name once more as she quit the room, moving unhurriedly through the bath to her own bedchamber. Here were her own things; her sanctuary from her husband's mercurial moods and cold sarcasm. Crookshanks was pathetically glad to see her, and she lost several moments petting her faithful familiar before dragging her old school trunk from beneath the pile of accumulated books her husband had refused to make room for in his library. It was easier, in a way – it meant she did not have to go through their common living room looking for her research texts and other things.

A shrinking charm was necessary on the books and her clothes; the 'appropriate' gowns he'd bought and forced her to wear whenever they appeared in public together were left hanging in the wardrobe. Neither the colors nor the style had ever suited her, she thought, and she would not miss them. It was pathetic, really, that she was able to fit her entire life into one trunk, but then again the trunk held nothing of Mrs. Severus Snape, only Hermione, and that was as it should be.

"So that's it?" came an accusing voice from the doorway, and she glanced up to see her husband lounging against the doorframe. He was attempting to look casual, but only succeeded in looking uncomfortable in his rumpled black silk dressing gown; one she'd bought as a Christmas gift, back when she was still attempting to make things work between them.

"I still need to get my things from the bath," she returned coolly, coaxing her cat into his carrier. For once, Crookshanks did not fight her.

"If you think I'll make this easy for you, Hermione, you're very much mistaken. I warned you once that if you threatened to leave me again..."

"You'd pack my things for me, yes, I remember," she interrupted. "As you can see, I'm not threatening anything. I'm just doing it."

"If you expect me to come trailing after you, like a dog after a bitch in heat..."

"I expect you to divorce me, Severus," she interrupted quietly.

His heavy features twisted in a mockery of humor. "Divorce? You have lost what's left of your mind. There is no divorce, Hermione. You knew that when you married me. You knew that when you begged me to save you from Draco Malfoy and his father and Kingsley Shacklebolt's plans for a dozen little mongrel whelps."

"I didn't beg you," she corrected. "I made my decision based on logic and on what you said you would bring to the marriage. You led me to believe that we could be, if not happy, at least content with our lot."

"If you've decided that's not enough, that is your look-out, not mine. I've told you continuously what I expect."

"Yes, you have. And I've tried. I think that I have tried very hard to give you everything you wanted. I've submitted to your demands in the bedroom. I've submitted to your guidance on what clothes to wear, how to style my hair, how to behave in public as your wife, and how we will eventually raise our children. God help the poor little bastards if we ever had managed to procreate."

Turning her back on the fuming man, Hermione lit the fire in her small grate with a negligent flick of her wand. A handful of Floo powder turned the flames green, and a moment later she called out "Minerva McGonagall's quarters" before sending her belongings and cat through.

Gathering up her cloak and her wand, Hermione conjured a large basket and used it to gather a few last things. Severus fidgeted with the tie on his robe as he followed her through the bathroom, watching her put lotions and hair ribbons and other nonsense into the basket. He trailed after her as she methodically went through their sitting room, picking up a periodical here and a forgotten scarf there. A final look around showed that for all the time she'd spent there, surprisingly little change had been made. The room was a bit brighter, for the new pillows and hearth rug she'd purchased, but otherwise showed no sign of her occupation.

"You can keep the rug and the pillows," she told him absently.

"Hermione! This is ridiculous," he growled, and when she did not respond he strode quickly towards her, reaching out to grasp her arm.

Her wand was up and in his face in an eyeblink; he did not move any closer when he looked her in the face and realized she was deadly serious.

"I highly recommend you do not touch me, Severus. I've borne enough of your marks and bruises as it is; the last thing I want is a reminder to take with me."

"Hermione," he began again in a less strident tone. "You are being absurd. There is no such thing as a divorce. We're stuck with each other -- for better or for worse." The last words were all but spat out from between his crooked teeth.

All he received was a level, silent look from dark brown eyes before she turned away. Severus followed her through the room to the doorway that led to his private labs and stood by, seething, as she dealt with the wards and passwords with practiced ease.

"Of course! I should have seen it coming. You're going to commit suicide and go out in one grand dramatic gesture!" His heavy sarcasm was back, the venom in his words beating at her back as she crossed the laboratory and opened the small cabinet he had given over for her use. Her apprenticeship had been in Charms, with a special emphasis on magic books, and some of her research had included the use of potions on the tomes that were not meant to be read by the average witch or wizard.

"How very fucking Gryffindor of you, Hermione!" he shouted at her as she removed her notes and personal equipment from the cabinet and filling the space in her basket. "I should have known you didn't have the guts to go through with a marriage to a man you couldn't thoroughly emasculate like you have all your friends! And some friends they turned out to be, didn't they? Every one of them has deserted you! Do you think they'll show up at your funeral and hex me for being a bastard? Is that your plan? Well, go ahead, you cowardly slut. I should have known better than to mistake a schoolgirl for a real woman."

"Are you finished?" she asked calmly. The man standing on the far side of the room was a far cry from the buttoned down potions master he had been when she married him; he had put on weight since their marriage and an incipient pot belly was causing the front of his dressing gown to gape open over his still-attractive chest.

Hermione took it all in, knowing this was the last time she'd see him this way and finding that she did not really give a flying fig. She knew her very calmness was infuriating to him; he hated it when she remained imperturbable. Severus losing his temper was one of the few times she saw any real passion from him, and she doubted she would miss seeing this private version of the greasy git of the dungeons.

"For your information, I have absolutely no desire or intention to commit suicide. If a death would have dissolved this marriage satisfactorily, I would likely have poisoned you long ago, and we know very well I could have done so and gotten away with it."

Severus gave a half-hearted sneer at that, but he knew as well as anyone that Hermione Granger Snape had a ruthless streak in her that came out at the oddest moments; it was one of the things that had kept him from being as thoroughgoing a bastard to her as he could have been. When he remained silent, Hermione reached once more into the cabinet and whispered a spell. The false door at the back opened, revealing a narrow shelf, and from it she took one of several vials.

"Do you recognize this?" she asked conversationally as she held it up. "This is a potion I designed for Molly Weasley. You may remember she asked you for some help when she began suffering from menorrahagia."

He made an impatient but affirmative noise, flicking strands of greasy black hair out of his face as he did so.

"Yes, I know the thought of Molly Weasley suffering a decade of menopause warmed the cockles of your heart. Six full term pregnancies and a handful of miscarriages did her womb no favors; it left her with a menstrual cycle that had her bleeding nearly three weeks out of the month. Outside the immediate discomfort, it was also causing her to suffer severe anemia and the beginning stages of osteoporosis. As I recall you made a remark about poetic justice."

He had the grace to flinch at that; it had been the cause of one of their greatest arguments and the raging anger Hermione had felt at his indifference had burned down into a cold disdain. That coldness had thawed, barely, when he gave her a handful of reference books and told her to figure something out on her own if she cared so much.

"What you failed to realize, Severus, is that when you tossed Molly Weasley's problem in my lap and gave me free reign to research it in your lab, you also gave me an idea. One brilliant, terrible idea, and the means to implement it. A potion doesn't really care how sick you are when you take it; it only does what it's designed to do. And I designed this potion to do a variety of things, all with one aim in mind."

She held the vial up to the meager lamp light, turning it to judge the quality of the seal and the potion within. It was slightly larger than a gill and half full of a pearlescent blue liquid. "I know I don't have to tell you that most oral contraceptives work by suppressing the release of pituitary gonadotropin. That stops a woman from ovulating and also thins the endometrial lining of the uterus. This," and she gave the vial a swirl before popping off the wax seal, "will permanently destroy that portion of a woman's pituitary gland. It will also attack the endometrial glands in the womb, permanently scarring the myometrium. Essentially, it will put the drinker in permanent and irreversible menopause by causing complete endometrial ablation." Under her fingers, the loose wax seal gave off a small, almost insignificant crack as it broke.

The dawning realization in his saturnine features had once given her a thrill; to see him actually notice her, to acknowledge her abilities was something for which she had at one timed struggled against all obstacles. Those rare moments when he gave her that look of approval, that raised eyebrow that showed she had surprised him.

It was hardly significant to her now. Nothing about him would ever affect her again, she vowed, not even the abortive step forward he made, the wordless exclamation that escaped his lips as she tilted her head back and drank the entire contents of the vial in few gulps. It was horrid, but she managed to control her facial expressions. Severus was not so controlled; his face was a snapshot of horror and shock as he realized the implications of her act. Wizarding law, despite its many shortcomings and the idiocy of the Marriage Act, still allows for divorce in the case of incurable insanity or infertility.

"This," she continued when she could speak again, "would actually work best in conjunction with a douche of tranexamic acid during my period, but it's not really necessary. I've decided to call it 'Wither'd Bloom' potion. You're not exactly Abelard; actually, you're rather more the convent. But I'm sure you appreciate the irony."

With brisk, efficient moves she recapped the vial and sent it sailing into the dust bin before transferring several more vials of the same potion to her basket. She tidied up the cupboard doors and closed them before looking around for anything else she'd forgotten.

"I'll pay the fines from the Ministry when we fail to fulfill the consummation clause on our marriage contract. By the time they get really nasty, I should have confirmation from Poppy and St. Mungo's that I'm permanently barren." She pinned her soon-to-be ex-husband with a sharp glance. "I do expect you to pay for the divorce; the suit should come from you as the injured party. We've kept our finances separate, for the most part, so that shouldn't be an issue."

"Hermione..." he finally managed, after swallowing heavily. "You can't be serious. You can't end our marriage this way."

"How would you rather I have ended it?" she asked sensibly. "Do you really think you should be allowed to have children, and warp them the way you have been trying to warp me for the last few years? Did you really think I'd bear children and then give them over to a bitter, misanthropic man like you to raise?" She shook her head, exasperated beyond reason.

"Severus Snape, in the last four years, I have heard less than four positive comments come from your mouth, and each of those were disguised as an insult or at the very least grudgingly bestowed. For four years I have waited to see if you really were going to retire from teaching, if you were ever going to do the things you said you'd do when we married. You never have. At least once a month for the past year I've asked you when you were going to make a change in your life, to go do something other than torment children for a living. Your answers were typically non-productive, uninformative, and usually hateful.

"I've come to the conclusion, finally, that you have no intention of every being anything but the hateful bat in the dungeon. You have no intention of changing, or doing the things you said you would when we married. And that is something I cannot accept. Nor will I stand by and let a man like that become the father of my children."

His face hardened at this pronouncement, and Hermione barreled on before he could retort. "Do you remember when you said you'd help me overturn the Marriage Law? So far, you've done nothing besides brew black market contraceptive potions and sell them at outrageous prices. Didn't think I knew about that, did you?" she questioned when he startled. "I did, and it's just one more reason for me to leave."

She staggered, and put one hand over her lower abdomen, but continued speaking briskly. "Speaking of which, it's time for me to go. I'll be indisposed for the next week; you can owl me when our divorce comes up before the Wizengamot." Hermione knew she would be more than indisposed; she would be violently and desperately ill for days.

"You'll be arrested for doing this," he warned after a beat. "They won't forgive you for removing yourself from their breeding program."

"Perhaps. If you tell them."

Nonplussed at her unruffled acceptance and implied challenge, Severus tried another tack. "They'll come up with a cure. Every potion has a counter."

"Most do," she admitted, turning in the open doorway to the corridor. "But you'll need my notes to do so, and you'll forgive my arrogance when I tell you there's not a chance in hell you can decipher them without my help."

His mulish expression and a nascent burn in her abdomen left Hermione with little desire to argue further, but she did not want to leave him fuming like this. Taking a deep breath, she added a final plea. "Think it over before you decide what to do, Severus. If you had kept even one of the vows you made me, I might not have left you. As it is..."

Hermione shrugged, and closed the door behind her.

Fin

Author's Notes:

First, the title of this fic is taken from Alexander Pope's poem, "Eloisa to Abelard" and is a staggeringly sad story of a woman locked in a convent, pining for her one true love. Here's the stanza I used for my title:

Now with'ring in thy bloom,  
Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!  
There stern religion quench'd th' unwilling flame,  
There died the best of passions, love and fame.

As Hermione said to Severus, you might appreciate the irony.

Second of all, I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. The following terms were gathered off the net during a frenzy of Google searches.

Menorrahagia -- a condition where a woman's uterus bleeds excessively during her period, and is a leading reason for hysterectomies.

Tranexamic acid -- a drug that encourages blood to clot on a bleeding surface, and can reduce menstrual bleeding.

Endometrial Ablation -- the burning away of the uterine lining.

Thirdly, some readers will see my Severus Snape and say –hey, that's the same guy from RachelW's "You Can't Have One Without The Other!" Yes, I've taken a snapshot of her Snape and projected that man, twisted to my specifications, into my fic. RachelW has already read this and given me her permission. Nobody freak out.


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